Windows 98 and Me do not natively support 48-bit LBA drives larger than 137 GB.

This means:

- If you have a hard disk larger than 137GB... and Windows trys to save data onto that disk past the 137GB barrier, data corruption (loss of files) is likely to occur.

- It doesn't matter if you partition the hard disk into smaller partitions, all partitions above the hard disks physical 137GB barrier will be affected.

- If you put a single partition on the hard disk using fdisk or alternative, and its less than 137GB (UNDER 128GB is recommended as safe) you will be fine (Just Don't allocate the remainder of the disk). But if you want to use the rest of the disk you must use a work around.

Rudolph Loew's 48-bit Patch - The High Capacity Disk Patch Program patches Windows 98/98SE/ME to provide direct support for hard drives larger than 137GB without requiring a controller card. The patch installs support for the 48-Bit LBA addressing mode required for hard drives larger than 137GB.

PCI ATA Controller card - Using a PCI ATA controller card to connect your 48-bit LBA hard drive to the system is the easiest and simplest option. With this option you can partition the hard drive without the need to upgrade the BIOS to support 48-bit LBA if it does not support this technology. The drivers provided with controller card will provide 48-bit LBA support in Windows 98 or Me.

The size of individual Partitions are subject to additional limitations due to FileSystem design and Partition management tools. Microsoft specifies a maximum Partition size of 128GB. Third Party Partition Management tools may have other limits.

DEFRAG and SCANDISK (in Windows Mode) are limited to less than 136.9GB Some people have reported limits as low as 127GB.

To disable ScanDisk from running after a bad shutdown in Windows 98 or Me:

1. Click on Start->Run

2. Enter "MSCONFIG"

3. On the General tab, click on the Advanced button.

4. Enable the checkbox "Disable Scandisk after bad shutdown"

5. Click on OK to exit the advanced settings

6. Click on OK to exit MSCONFIG.

DOS, WINDOWS and SCANDISK (in DOS Mode) can handle at least 400GB.

WARNING: Diskeeper 10 claims to support Partitions up to 768GB and Windows 98/SE/ME. Tests show that it can corrupt large Partitions.

It is recommended that you Partition your Large Hard Drive with 2 or more Partitions so that no single Primary or Logical Partition is larger than 127GB.

FDISK can be used to Partition Large Hard Drives but will incorrectly report sizes above 64GB. You will need to enter sizes as Percentages in order to use the full capacity of the Hard Drive.

Windows 98 Second Edition and Me can support upto 1 GB of RAM. Exceeding 128 MB or RAM can cause problems.

No. 1: For systems with more than 128 MB of RAM, setting a VCache maximum of about 70% of your total RAM is recommended as prophylaxis against run-away VCache growth in rare, specialized situations.

No. 2: VCache increasing above 512 MB can create serious memory handling problems. If you have more than 512 MB of RAM, a VCache maximum of 524,288 KB (or a little less) is recommended. This is obtained by adding a MaxFileCache=x entry in the [vcache] section of SYSTEM.INI, where x is the maximum value you wish to set. VCache is limited internally to a maximum cache size of 800 MB. The problem is that, on computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum VCache size can be large enough that it consumes all of the available addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as opening an MS-DOS prompt. This problem may occur more easily if you have an AGP video adapter: The AGP aperture is also mapped to addresses in the system arena, and if VCache is using its entire 800 MB allowance and an AGP video adapter has a 128 MB aperture mapped, there will be very little address space remaining for other system code and data that must occupy the available range of virtual addresses.

No. 3: For systems with more than 1 GB of RAM, the defaults in Windows 98 or ME can cause continuous rebooting of the computer, or to hangs or serial reboots during the Windows upgrade process. To resolve this problem, add a MaxPhysPage=40000 entry in the [386enh] section of SYSTEM.INI. This effectively limits the amount of RAM Windows can access to 1 GB. Microsoft has now flatly stated that, “Windows Me and Windows 98 are not designed to handle more than 1 GB or RAM. More than 1 GB can lead to potential system instability.”

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This thread would be better on a webpage, especially when it comes to organising.

You forgot about the timing problems which stop Windows 95 from being usable on CPU speeds higher than 350 Mhz, and Windows 98 FE (and consequently Win95) from being usable on CPU speeds higher than 2.2 Ghz.